Oblivion
by Coqui's Song
Summary: The day the living Clans begin to forget you is the worst day of a StarClan cat's life. What's worse is that you don't know where you're going. A haven like StarClan? Or oblivion?


**Last night at about 7:30pm, I realized that today is 12/12/12, and suddenly I had the urge to write something really quick, because I wanted the post date to be 12/12/12. XD I had absolutely no idea what I'd write, and I started out about two stories before my imaginary friend poked me and said, "**_**Hey, I know you don't really follow **_**Warriors**_** anymore, and you hate the "new" thing the Erins have thought up about StarClan, but how interesting is it to explore this idea? Huh?" **_**  
**

**And I was intrigued, so I made these little characters up and jammed out 1,000 words last night. Then when I came back home from school today, I went straight to my computer and finished it. It's very rambly and doesn't have much imagery (was too caught up with back-story), but I guess I like it. ^.^**

**Anyway, this fic is dedicated to my recently deceased (step)grandfather. May he rest in heaven. :) **

**I don't own **_**Warriors**_**.**

_Oblivion_

By_: Coqui's Song_

The day that the Clans began to forget me was the worst day of my life as a StarClan warrior. It is the day that every cat of StarClan dreads. Well, at least, _I _dreaded it, but I like to think that I wasn't alone. I panicked, for I knew that I had only a matter of time before I faded from StarClan entirely, and would never be heard of again.

There is no shortage of rumors about where we went after we faded; some StarClan cats said it was another place much like StarClan, but where every cat, Tribe, kittypet, Clan cat, loner, rogue, went. Others say it is nothing but a black, senseless oblivion. Feeling nothing, seeing nothing, not even being conscious. When you fade, you fade… and that is what terrifies me most.

I wake as usual, and glance with ever-rising horror at my translucent paws. Most cats, I know, are eventually content to let go after being in StarClan so long, but I love watching the Clans and I, like several before me, have always been afraid of the unknown.

"Shadepool." I turn at the sound of my name, which I hadn't heard in moons. My dark gray fur bristles. No one is supposed to know my name. My family members faded ages ago, all except my nieces and nephews. I never had kits in my life in the living Clans. I had been a warrior, but I had never been interested in finding a mate until it was too late. I was killed in a battle with a rival Clan. I had been pregnant, though not noticeably. I was killed, and I took my unborn kits with me. That, I think, was the real tragedy. Until now, when my selfishness makes me worry about my own fate and what is in store for me when I fade from StarClan.

Unborn kits do not enter StarClan. I suppose they go to wherever I'm going when I fade. My stomach clenches at the thought. Will I be able to see my kits? Will they know who I am?

Yet if what comes next is only oblivion, I will never meet them, never see what they would have looked like, never would see them as the strong noble warriors I'm sure they would have been. I love them, if only for the reason that they were my kits, and that they should have been granted life. But as a young warrior, I had been so crazed with the desire to prove myself to my Clan, I did not care for the small lives growing in my belly. I craved only honor and glory. The price had been much too high, as I figured out when I joined StarClan.

My eyes had become unfocused with these thoughts, and now the cat again calls my name. "Shadepool."

I flatten my ears and concentrate on the cat in front of me. He's a large, youngish, rather handsome black tom with sparkling amber eyes. He has mysterious, somewhat dangerous air about him, which makes me wary, but his eyes are friendly and filled with concern, and his face so incredibly kind, my heart aches to look at him.

"Who are you, and how do you know my name?" I hiss, taking a threatening stance, though I'm sure I look silly, since he towers over me.

His voice is quiet as a leaf touching the ground, smooth as a lazy river's water rolling over colored stones and pebbles. There is one answer to two questions, for the answers are the same. "I am Death."

My fur fluffs out even more and I take a step back. I have never heard of this cat; no cat who was fading ever mentioned anything about seeing him. I can only assume by this that it is my time, and that strikes terror in my heart, despite the tom's compassionate expression. "I'm not leaving StarClan."

He laughs. "No, no. You're not fading away yet. No, I don't appear to those whose time has come. I hardly appear to anyone at all."

"So why have you come to me?" I growl, trying to look everything but him. I'm failing; Death interests me. Who is he really, what does he do, why is he here, how can the embodiment of the very thing that is dreaded by all be so kind?

Death doesn't reply directly. Instead he pads past me, looking sadly at the shimmering StarClan forest. A leaf hangs low to the ground, and he noses it, then glances back to me, his amber eyes bright as stars. "Life," the black tom muses. "Life is so precious and beautiful, so fragile. And life is strong, so very strong. Only one thing is stronger. And it is something every living thing must do."

"Die," I say.

The handsome black tom nods. "Everything that lives must die, yet I am feared by all. I did not ask to be feared in life; I only wanted power over other cats. I got more power than I wanted, and it turns out that one of the only ways to get power was to inspire fear in others. It is my nature to seem to be terrifying, and once creatures are close to their time, they see that I'm not so frightening after all. But you are more afraid than most. And so I come to show you the compassion and understanding you need to let go. You're extremely stubborn, Shadepool. You need to learn to let go. "

"Let go? Of StarClan?" I ask, becoming irritated, but feeling sympathy for him at the same time.

He nods and gestures with his long tail for me to walk with him. "I understand that you died before it was your time, and you were pregnant."

I flatten my ears again. "Yes. I killed them, it's all my fault."

"Nonsense," he spits, eyes flashing amber fire. "I know that you didn't even realize you were expecting kits until you joined StarClan. You couldn't have been very far along."

"I still killed them," I say, quivering.

"Your mate killed them."

I stiffen at his words. "I was the one who made the plan. I was the one who told him that we would kill each other in battle. Blame my mate if you must, but I know that it was my foolishness that killed me and let him live."

"You were foolish, yes," Death replies. "You had a mate in a rival Clan, but you were ashamed of it, and when tensions between your two Clans rose, and chances of them finding about your love increased, you made your foolish and selfish suggestion that in the upcoming battle, you would take one another by the neck and bite at the same time. You thought you were being romantic; you thought that you could still be remembered with honor in your Clan, you thought you could join StarClan together and spend the rest of eternity with one another in love. But what really happened, Shadepool? He pinned you down and he murdered you. It turned out he didn't care for you after all."

I start to tremble furiously, feeling upset and stupid, not understanding why he was digging deep into secrets I had long since buried to protect myself from the agony. I hate him. Words are difficult to get around the lump in my throat; I can only choke out one syllable. "Why?"

Death's eyes are full of pain, love, compassion, sorrow. "He didn't love you, Shadepool. You may have suggested your mouse-brained plan, which wouldn't have worked anyway, but he was the one to give you the killing bite. He killed you, and he killed your kits, too."

I whimper, wanting nothing more than to back away from this tom who reopened my old wounds, but I stand still as a stone as he ambles toward me and hesitantly muzzles me affectionately. And I cannot be upset with him anymore. I can feel nothing but love for this tom; this cat who understands me more than I understand myself.

It's puzzling that I went from fearing him, to briefly abhorring him, to loving him more than life itself. No, not life. I loved my mate more than life, or at least I thought I did, but then he murdered me, and now it's clear to me that I didn't really love him either.

"What waits for me, Death?" I wonder, still afraid of what is to come.

He shakes his head. "That I can't tell you." But he says it in such a way that calms my worries, even without further explanation.

"Then why did you come to me?"

"You needed to hear the truth of your own life, for you have deceived yourself too long. You needed to open your eyes to the truth, because only then could you truly fade." Death gazes at me, his eyes soft. "I feel that you are at peace, too, for now."

"My kits never got to live," I reply sorrowfully. "Even now, when I have accepted my past, and my present, and my future. The one thing that I regret is that my kits never felt the sun on their fur, never felt the rush of the hunt, never had the joy of feeling free and alive."

"It's a great misfortune," he agrees. "But _you _lived, and so you must now feel all the things life has given you tenfold to make up for the lost lives. Promise me that when your time comes, Shadepool, you will feel all the things that you have ever felt. Not for yourself, but your lost kits. … And for me. When I walked the earth, all I wanted was power. I cared for nothing else. I did not love, I did not hate. I felt nothing. When I died, I realized that I had missed out on all the goodness life would have given me had I not been so focused on my goals. I became Death, the very embodiment of the most feared event in everyone's life. I was meant to be terrible, horrifying. I vowed to be nothing but compassionate. Even if I never appear to a cat, when he or she dies, they are never truly afraid. Instead, they are filled with peace, and as they feel the peace, I feel everything they've felt. I experience their life from their eyes. Alas, their lives, like power and honor and glory, are only temporary pleasures. So you must feel everything, every last thing, for me, so I can be filled with your life for more than a heartbeat, so I may be filled with your life for moons. Seasons. Years. Millennia. Promise me."

"Why is _my_ life so important?" I demand, wondering why he can't just ask another cat, one who has lived far longer than I have, to grant his request.

"You lived a short life," he says, "but you felt everything a cat can feel, and stronger. Please, Shadepool. Promise me."

I slowly nod. "I promise."

"Thank you." He smiles, relieved. Then he hesitates. "I can't tell you about the life after the life after death, but I can tell you when you will fade."

"When?"

"In four moons. Don't expect to see me again, but I'll be there with you, Shadepool. Always."

"Death," I plead, feeling the utmost love for him. "I –"

"I know, Shadepool. As do I. That's why I asked you to promise me." The black tom's amber eyes are brimming with affection as his image grows dim, and then he's gone, which leaves me alone and afraid again.

I've been staring at my pelt for the past four moons, and I get paler with each day that passes. I feel nauseated as I look at my pelt, once brilliantly gleaming with stars, now dim, and know I am dying; my time is short, I have perhaps one day left. Yet I do absolutely nothing. I do not seek out Death, I do not look for my nieces and nephews. I waste the day away, pacing the clearing, fretting about what is to come. I hope desperately that it is like another StarClan, that I will be able to see my kits and my family, but I have a rising and horrible suspicion that it is not that at all. No, rather it is the nothingness; the void which fills my nightmares, the rumor that I refuse to believe is true but know in my heart that nothing could be more certain, and that is why Death refused to explain anything to me. When this day ends, and I finally fade, I will be lost in the sky forever.

I will feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, think nothing. It will be as if I have never existed.

And then I think, is it really so bad to be lost in oblivion? If I am not aware of anything, if I am not conscious, then what makes it different from the time before I was born? Perhaps we all are from the same void, and we must eventually return to it.

With these semi-comforting thoughts, I close my eyes and try to feel myself, all of myself. For Death. I try to remember every single bit of information of myself as I can, and feel everything I have ever felt in my life: love, loss, hope, despair, honor, pride, freedom, agony, anger, hate, joy, weakness, strength, confidence, shyness, embarrassment. I think of my kits, and I name them and I love them; I pretend they had lived. I feel.

Before I go completely out of consciousness, I am aware of my star brightening, blazing brighter than ever before in a fiery supernova, and then suddenly sputters out. Just like me, my life. One moment, my life is a steady glow, and suddenly it flares, and goes dim again. Dimmer. Dimmer still, until the light that is my life dies, and the spot in the sky that was once my star is now only a patch of darkness. I tense, knowing that in a few heartbeats, I will be gone forever.

For a moment, I realize that I can feel Death with me. His gentle touch, cold as ice, is oddly comforting. I faintly hear him utter a prayer, and knowing he is with me, that he will always be with me, makes me relax. I let myself fade out of StarClan, out of consciousness, for what seemed to be a moment and eternity at once.

**Ambiguous ending is ambiguous. :D I got to editing it because I really didn't like the ending, so. Yeah. But this one still seems to be an abrupt ending. Ah, screw it. XD**

**Review if you wish~**

_**~Coqui's Song**_


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